The Icefalcon felt the movement of his enemy's arm against him and glanced sidelong to see Loses His Way reach inside his coat to touch the spirit-pouches that hung around his neck.
"I thought you said this Bektis had lost the greater part of his power?"
"He made this glamour before, to show it to Vair, wanting his praise," the Icefalcon whispered. "It did not take much to renew now, like a banked coal being breathed once again to life."
"Not bad, my Lord, you must admit."
Twin Daughter said something to his lord in a teasing voice, flirting with him, and Vair's dark face split with a lewd grin. The Icefalcon did not understand the idiomatic speech, but the tone was that of a woman of the streets, bantering a customer, and he felt Loses His Way shiver.
"She looks good enough to bed," purred Vair, and put a hand on Twin Daughter's-Prinyippos'-cheek.
The counterfeit woman simpered and made a play of eyelashes, and the men around them hooted and laughed. "Of course," Vair added with a grin, "she did before."
"Hyena." The voice of Loses His Way was soft, like the first cracking of the ice underfoot, when a traveler is too far to reach shore before it gives. "Scum."
"She is dead." The Icefalcon turned his eyes away, not wanting to see what he saw in his enemy's face.
"She lies beyond his dishonor."
"Even so," he breathed. "Even so."
"You will go with Prinyippos," Vair continued, turning to Bektis. "At a safe distance you will follow to maintain this illusion that you keep on him. Mongret, Gom, Tuuves..."
There was a stirring-the first man stepped forward, but Gom and Tuuves were clones, and nearly a dozen of each tried to amble to the front. Vair seized one of each name, gestured the rest back as if they had been beggars importuning him in the street.
"My Lord," said Bektis, "you know the strength of my illusions. The caving-in of the crevasse can be accomplished as easily from within these walls as without. May I remind my Lord that the wizard Inglorion is still somewhere here."
"I thought you had killed him, Bektis." The gold eyes cut to him, a flint knife gashing flesh. "And yes, I know well the strength of your illusions. When the avalanche is accomplished and all the barbarians are dead, you will return and inform me. I will send you out again with the larger party to recover the bodies.
I trust you will find some way to keep the barbarians engaged outside until the matter is accomplished."
"My Lord," said Bektis stiffly, "they have not yet returned."
"Excellent." Vair folded his arms, his hooked hand as always out of sight within the folds of his cloak.
"I trust I have no need to remind you of the probable fate of a mage who, through spells forbidden by both other wizards and the Church, influenced not only the choice, but the date, of the succession of the Prince-Bishop of the Alketch, should that mage find himself abroad in the world without a protector?"
Bektis' mouth tightened under the flowing beard, his dark eyes filled with loathing and fear. "You have no need to remind me, my lord. Nor do I need reminding that rightness and legality consist not in what one has done, but whether one holds a position of power."
Vair smiled. "Good. But I shall remind you nevertheless should you show signs of absentmindedness. Be prepared to depart at the next chiming of the clock."
The Icefalcon and Loses His Way watched while further dispositions were made, four men set to guard the great Doors while others were sent out searching again.
The Icefalcon caught the word for what his people called innyiasope, yellow jessamine, a potent poison frequently used to deprive mages of their powers, and guessed that Ingold was their quarry. The old man had been hurt already by the pent rage and magic of the Keep of Shadow. Gil-Shalos would kill him, thought the Icefalcon, if he let Ingold come to further harm.
Beside him, Loses His Way asked in a low voice, "How much ill can this Bektis do?"
"Because he has not the Hand of Magic does not mean he is without power," replied the Icefalcon. "My sister tells me that there are herbs a Wise One may chew to temporarily increase power in times of need or restore it when after too great an exertion it fails, though the cost is terrible afterward."
He watched the graceful white-haired Wise One make his way to the nearest stair. "I have known Bektis many years, and he is a man who is never without such an expedient. He may have used such to renew the illusion existing on Prinyippos the Crested Egret. In any case, men can start an avalanche in this country as easily as magic."
The chieftain chewed on the ends of his mustache, staring out into the torchlight, which faded as men dispersed into the mazes once more.
One of the searchers halted in crossing a toadstool-choked watercourse, reached down to lift something from the bridge-a cup, the Icefalcon saw, one of those weird apports that were, like the knocking, signs of the growing strength of the mad ki within the dark.
At last Loses His Way sighed, his broad shoulders slumping, and he said again, "Even so. My enemy, see the boy bestowed somewhere safe and fetch Hethya to this place at the sounding of the next chime. Tell her to come armed."
The Icefalcon raised his brows. "If you think the three of us capable of defeating four warriors with a full view of the Aisle and a wall at their backs..."
"Just fetch her."
There was a note in his voice that made the Icefalcon turn and a look in the chieftain's eyes-resigned, defeated, sad-that made him pause. But there was nothing he could say to his enemy-who was not his kinsman-nothing he could ask that Loses His Way would answer.
So he only asked, "Will you need light?" and, at Loses His Way's assent, slipped into the corridor again, down two turnings to where the gray cold-dried plants lay thick and came back to kindle another torch.
Then, slipping quietly along the endless crisscrossed junctures of the halls, detouring twice, thrice, and many times again to avoid the plants or the ice that would leave mark of his passing, he made his way to the hidden stair that led to the chamber of Silence.
An hour, he thought, for Prinyippos to reach the Empty Lakes People. An hour or perhaps two to convince them of the truth of his assertions, to explain how he, Twin Daughter, had come to this place.
The Stars alone knew how he was going to do that. Breaks Noses was a seasoned warrior and a skeptical man: the Icefalcon had fought him in a dozen minor raids and wars. He would sniff cautiously at a trap before stepping inside.
But the shaman of the Empty Lakes People was long dead. The wolfskin leggings and tunic that Twin Daughter appeared to wear were the very garments in which she had ridden to her death: a Wise One, whatever else one might say of Bektis, was always keenly observant.
Her hair had the same bright hue, like the grass on the southern slope of the Twisted Hills in the Moon of Farewell, and braided into it were the hand bones of a man who had long ago stolen her horses in the forty-mile dry stretch between Angry Creek and the Place Where We Catch Salmon.
Prinyippos would come out of seracs that marked the buried mountains and speak to the Empty Lakes People with Twin Daughter's voice. Even the mother of Twin Daughter would believe.
Perhaps especially the mother of Twin Daughter.
The Icefalcon quickened his stride. Everywhere, now, he had the sensation of being watched. Where he turned to avoid a tunnel filled for thirty feet and no farther with bars and sheets and spears of ice, he saw by his feeble matchlight that the icicles bled.
What would Prinyippos say to them? he wondered. The Keep was buried under half a mile of ice. They had been tracking the great party of men and mules, drawn by rumors of southern weapons of tempered steel. Would he say to them, "There is a great house, a great city, of the mud-diggers, where they have these weapons under slender guard"?